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Tag Archives: david eddings

I’ve been trying to figure out which books I’ve blogged about and which I haven’t. So far, I am 26 books in to my goal of reading 60 books this year. A lot of them have been re-reads of books that I already own – there are so many on my bookshelves right now that I barely remember reading! It’s been nice to go back and revisit them.

Example: The Shining Ones and The Hidden City, both by David Eddings, books two and three of his Tamuli series. Mr. Eddings is one of my favorite fantasy authors, one of the first fantasy authors I ever read. His books all have a rich story world that is easy to immerse yourself in. The Tamuli series is no exception and it has been a blast reading it again.

I also read Diana Pharaoh Francis’ Path of Fate for the book club over at The Mallorean Tavern. While it was an okay read, I felt some of the pieces of the story were a bit too cookie cutter. It also seemed towards the end that the heroine ended up getting too much power too easily. There wasn’t enough struggle, at least not how I read it. There were several things I liked about the book though, including the ahalad-haaslane – a bond between a human and an animal sent by the goddess to help serve the people. The characters were likable, but for the most part, very average.

Finally, I finished reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien (as if I really needed to say) with The Return of the King. I read this with the lovely crowd over at Mark Reads and it was really fun. It has been forever since I read these books, and reading along with someone experiencing them for the first time was a great experience.

Camp NaNoWriMo is going great. I’m still keeping up with my word count goals. My current word count is 6,855, which is just above target. Are any of you writing this summer?

I absolutely love airports. There’s just something about the idea of being able to hop on a plane and go . . . anywhere! And you always see interesting people there, visiting from all over the world. I always thought it would be an interesting place to work, although probably stressful at times.

This weekend I went back up to New York. I got to see Seminar again, which was wonderful. I even did the stage door thing and got my Playbill signed by the entire cast. I’m such a sucker for this sort of thing.

Heading back home today. I tried to get some writing done this weekend, but there wasn’t that much time. Plus, my packing space was limited, so most of my typing was done on my Kindle. Effective, but not very efficient. Although I’m getting faster. I did, however, manage to finish another book, Domes of Fire by David Eddings. It’s the first book in the Tamuli trilogy, which is a continuation of the Elenium trilogy, which I finished earlier in the year. A very good book. I’ll get around to re-reading the other two books at some point.

I still have about 20 minutes before my flight boards, so I guess I’ll kick back and relax for a bit.

One thing you will notice if you read my blog is that I love, love, love talking about the books I’m reading. Since I’ve challenged myself to read 60 books this year, I figured listing them here would be a good way to keep track of the books I liked and the books I didn’t.

(Although, to be fair, there are very few books I actually dislike. I’ll stick with almost anything, and usually can find at least one thing positive to say about them.)

Anyway, the first book I read for 2012 is The Sapphire Rose by David Eddings. This is the third and final book of the Elenium trilogy, although the story continues for another three books in the Tamuli trilogy, which I will be reading soon. I’ve read them before, but it’s been a really, really long time. There were a lot of things I had completely forgotten, including just how good these books are.

The one thing that I really appreciate about the Elenium, or in fact all of Eddings’ books, is his skill at creating a brilliant story world. As a fantasy writer who is struggling to make sure that her story world makes any sense at all, I can appreciate just how difficult a task this is. This series features one of the most interesting religious constructions I’ve ever seen. The main character is Sparhawk. He is a knight, more specifically, a Church Knight. The Church of the Elenes has four militant orders, who swear oaths to defend the church and the people of the Elene kingdoms. I love this concept! Through their adventures, they have to work magic (yes, the Knights are trained in magic – that just makes them all the more awesome) in order to defeat an evil foreign god and his followers from taking over.

Religious ferver. Magic. Chivalry. All things that can make a very good fantasy novel. David Eddings was the first fantasy author I ever read and as such, he will always be one of my favorites.